Monday, October 02, 2006

blogging as scholarly activity

each year, USF faculty are required to submit an academic career prospectus, or ACP. the meat of the document is in part two, which asks faculty to discuss their teaching, research, and service plans and goals for the next year. the guidelines for research are forward-thinking:
Research
a. Area(s) of primary interest and relationship to longer-term goals,
b. Publication and paper development goals, and
c. Planned research and creative work not reflected through publications or papers.
having c) in the guidelines is so cool and allows me to discuss - in addition to publications, presentations, and grants - projects like RCCS, the september project, and academic blogging.

today, the ACP is due and i made sure to include the following under research:
Academic Blogging – My blog affords me academic connections to colleagues, students, and scholarly, artistic, and activist communities. Sometimes, the connections produce professional opportunities such as presentations, publications, and collaborations. Sometimes, the connections produce intellectual opportunities like multi-authored comment threads that further nuance an issue, idea, or interpretation. I enjoy and benefit academically from such connections, and look forward to expanding such activities. Further, I will continue to use my blog to share my research with my students and to share my students’ work with my colleagues.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brilliant! I'm glad to see that USF is so forward-thinking. I'm guessing that it's only a matter of time before other universities start to realize how valuable (and time-consuming) this sort of work is - especially in the push to include more of the "public" in academic discourse.

Interestingly, I just received a notice about a session the Simpson Center is hosting about "Creating Community Through Blogging" here at the UW. I'm not sure what all of this is about (yet), but they have a bunch of test blogs posted at community.uwblogs.org. Apparently the whole project was started by some grad students in English/textual studies.

Anonymous said...

hey adrienne!

i'm less than convinced that universities, esp research one universities, really want to interact with non-academic publics. i hope, though, you're right and that many of them realize that the best kind of university is the university that interacts with the diverse communities that surround it.

that said, how cool is the simpson center? i swear, i love that center, the people that work there, and the projects they fund. i hope you'll be able to work with them, too. thanks for pointing out the community blogs project - it will be interesting to watch that project grow.

....J.Michael Robertson said...

Kudos. Academic blogging takes energy and discipline and should not be confused with personal blogging, which requires much less of both. Anyone who has not blogged should try it if only to discover that a blog like your own deserves praise and admiration -- and, of course, should count toward tenure and promotion.

Clarissa Lee said...

'Academic' Blogging is my way of venting invectives in a manner not quite appropriate for my job, which requires a more diplomatic/PR-ish stance. :)


But on a deeper level, it's also another way for me to examine the myriad conditions of human culture and think through critically about issues, with ideas jumping out at me even as I blog about something else. At the same time, I can write the way I think, which may not necessarily be a polished article with obvious conclusions. And it provides me with some sort of tenuous connection to academia and its evolution.


But if I am to put it on my CV, it will be under the "Hobbies" section. :)

How did that "teach-in" go? I forwarded it to friends who are teachers in colleges and universities in my country. It will be interesting to read about the kind of responses generated from across the board.

Clarissa

Anonymous said...

clarissa - nicely put, i agree.

i posted a not so brief summary of the teach-in here.